Burly pair’s anger at gay speculation

BEING branded assassins was bad enough – but what really upset Ruslan Boshirov and Alexander Petrov was the suggestion they might wear women’s perfume.

The muscular men feigned horror when asked if they smuggled deadly novichok in a bottle of Nina Ricci fragrance.

Boshirov said crossly it would be ‘stupid for two straight men to carry perfume for ladies’, with his accomplice grumbling: ‘Why would a man need perfume for women?’

Their terse objections prompted Russian media to suggest the two ‘fashionable’ men were on a romantic minibreak together.

One news website even started a bizarre poll asking readers whether the muscular pair were ‘agents made to be gays or gays made to be agents’.

After the perfume exchange, the RT interviewer probed: ‘Speaking of straight men, all the footage features you two together. You spent time together, you lived together, you went for a walk together. What do you have in common that you spend so much time together?’

Boshirov complained: ‘You know, let’s not breach anyone’s privacy. We came to you for protection, but this is turning into some kind of interrogation.’

When online speculation began over their sexuality, 38-year-old interviewer Margarita Simonyan – head of the Kremlin ‘propaganda’ channel – retorted: ‘I do not know if they are gay or not. They are quite fashionable – with little beards, good haircuts, tight trousers, sweaters tight over big biceps.’

She said that the men had not ‘hit on her’.